Selling spread across Asia, with shares in financials, exporters and commodity firms all suffering sharp losses, as investors clamored to sell following an enormous run-up in global equities since early March. Oil prices were little changed after plummeting overnight, while the dollar gained slightly against the yen.

Investors reverted to worrying about the banking industry after Bank of America, while posting a profit in the first quarter, said it was setting aside $13.4 billion to cover losses from souring loans.

The news raised the specter of more colossal write-downs as defaults climb and left many questioning the quality of better-than-expected earnings from other major banks that had cheered Wall Street just a week ago.There was also growing anxiety the results of the government’s “stress tests,” to be released in May, will show many banks are still in dire straits and may need more government bailout money.

Investors had plunged headlong into the market recently amid speculation the recession will end sooner than originally thought. Whether Tuesday’s correction is the start of another stretch lower or an aberration in a bull market remains to be seen.

But well-known U.S. economist Nouriel Roubini, among the few experts to foresee the current crisis, was skeptical. He said the results of the government’s bank stress tests, along with further decay in the U.S. economy and surprisingly bad corporate earnings this year, will lead some markets to test the lows reached in March.

“For people who say there are green shoots, I see only yellow weeds frankly,” Roubini said at a conference in Hong Kong Tuesday. “It’s not a true recovery. It’s just a bear-market rally, it’s a suckers rally.”

Among exporters, Toyota Motor Corp. lost 3.9 percent after reports the automaker’s domestic output this fiscal year is likely to fall to the lowest level in more than three decades. As a result, the company will have difficulty maintaining its entire full-time work force, according to the top-selling Yomiuri newspaper.